• Technology

    Bomber Tank Becomes Wading Pool

    By Laura Silver Posted on 3.16.2009 7 Comments

    July 1947: "Warplane wing tanks, which can be picked up as war surplus for about $5, make excellent back-yard wading pools. The pool shown was cut from a wing tank made for a B-17 bomber. It was laminated neoprene and cloth and required a couple of hours of cutting time, but it was so stiff that no frame was needed for rigidity." Browse the full PopSci archives on the Web.

  • The Environment

    Birth Control for Animals

    By Paul Adams Posted on 3.3.2009 18 Comments

    "Mother Goose" might soon be an anachronism. In wildlife biology, concerns about animal populations often stem from unnatural declines; in a few cases, however, that concern can be a result of too many animals, not too few, as some once-threatened species have returned with a vengeance. Now a group of researchers is fighting back with a familiar (to humans, at least) tactic: birth control.

  • Science

    The Science of YouTube: Cuuute!

    By Paul Adams Posted on 2.12.2009 1 Comments

    Are you a puppy!? Are you a cutest little puppernaut?! Are you a special one? Why are you so little? How did you get so cute and small? Why are you so cute? Why are you so cute! No, seriously -- why?

  • The Environment

    The Big Thaw

    By Abby Seiff Posted on 2.2.2009 21 Comments

    One hundred thirty miles north of Nome, a small coastal village on Sarichef Island is feeling the effects of climate change. Shishmaref, Alaska, is falling into the sea. Rising temperatures are melting the permafrost, the layer of frozen ground beneath the surface. Without this firm base, waves have eroded the land on which Shishmaref’s villagers make their home. They must relocate their houses inland or start all over somewhere else.

  • Technology

    The Flying Car Gets Real

    By Abby Seiff Posted on 10.8.2008 48 Comments

    The Transition is not a flying car. The vehicle, set to go on sale next year, will cruise smoothly on the road and through the sky. It will have four wheels, Formula One–style suspension, and a pair of 10-foot-wide wings that fold up when it switches from air to asphalt. And when the engineers at Terrafugia in Woburn, Massachusetts, let me sit inside their just-finished proof-of-concept vehicle and grab the steering wheel, it’s easy to imagine piloting this thing up and out of traffic, into the open skies.

  • Entertainment & Gaming

    Do a Little Dance, Make a Little Dash...

    By Abby Seiff Posted on 10.17.2008 9 Comments

    Usain Bolt is freaking fast. Usain Bolt is so freaking fast, so much more so than all those other freaking fast, that he had room to taunt his competitors in a 100 meter dash. We’ll repeat that for emphasis: in a 100 meter dash. Despite a victory dance mid-race, Bolt still broke his own world record lowering it from 9.72 sec to 9.69 sec. But what if he had sprinted through the tape? According to an astrophysicist, Bolt would’ve done something never done before in sport.


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February 2012: The Future of Fun

Science is reinventing play, from extreme sports to gamification to ridiculous roller coasters to the playgrounds of tomorrow, and this issue is chock full of fun. Also, on a less fun note: Did global warming destroy my hometown?


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